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President Obama Sets Up Gun Violence Task Force

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(CBS NEWS) – Five days after the murder of 20 children and six faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., riled the nation, President Obama announced the formation of a task force to provide immediate recommendations of how to reduce gun violence.

“This won’t be some Washington commission” that takes six months to study the problem and write a report that goes nowhere, he said. He insisted that he wants ready-to-act concrete recommendations on the “complex issue” in January.

Vice President Joe Biden will lead the task force and he will be guided by cabinet members and outside groups. Biden was a key author of a crime bill in 1994 that put more cops on the streets and banned assault weapons. The assault weapons ban expired in 2004, and after Newtown there are renewed calls to reinstate it.

Indicating that gun politics are tough to overcome, the president said at a news conference announcing the task force Wednesday, “The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing.”

When asked how he is going to overcome the powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, the president put the onus on them. “I would hope they do some self-reflection,” he said.

He added that the NRA and the members of Congress they strongly support should change their mentality that any legislation related to guns, especially gun safety, is an automatic “encroachment on the Second Amendment.”

The NRA rates members of Congress on gun-related votes as well as vote indirectly related to guns. For instance, they ranked the confirmation of Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.